more metal parts cleaned: before ...
... and after! note that i put that nice inspection sticker on top of the coin counter
now on to something that i've really been dreading: the restoration of the bottom of the cabinet
! it didn't have any water damage, but the leg levelers were installed not high enough and therefore the entire cabinet rested on the mdf wood. and we all know what happens when mdf gets dragged around over and over again ... AND OVER AGAIN!!!
believe me, it is even worse than the pictures make you believe! normally, the mdf plates have a width of 2 centimeters, but with the cabinet having been dragged, pushed and pulled around so many times in the past, you can double that measure in many places.
it is literally coming apart
i thought about how to tackle that for a long time and at one point i wanted to cut off the entire lower section and replace it, but as i've said many times before, to me the cabinet itself is the heart of an arcade game and the more of it you can keep, the better! therefore, i decided to give it a try by roughly cutting off the worst sections ...
... and then cleaning it up nicely!
this is just "a tiny selection" of the wood i had to remove
with that being done, i dug out "ye good olde wood hardener" and brushed the exposed mdf three to four times! this stuff smells like hell
, but soaks deeply into the wood and basically works like a glue from the inside out, making the brittle mdf plates pretty sturdy again!
but just to make sure, i nailed and glued thin (but strong) wooden planks to the inside of the base to give it a little more stability!
but "just to make even surer"
, i have one more twist in my bag of tricks - stay tuned!
